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After 9/11, all operations in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq are complete disaster. I wonder why all of them failed.
by m00dy 5y ago
After 9/11, all operations in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq are complete disaster. I wonder why all of them failed.
- rich_sasha 5y agoI’d add to this, how come the fight against ISIS worked out, by contrast?
- hindsightbias 5y agoSalafi jihadists have a way of burning themselves out. But there will always be a new wave. And the will of the non-Sunni Syrians and Kurds should not be underestimated. They didn’t roll over and walk to slaughter like the Iraqi Army. Those who make up the Taliban aren’t crazy. They play generational war. Have for millennia.
- the-dude 5y agoWhat what the last success ?
- edoceo 5y agoWW2? But, that was a team effort.
- arthurcolle 5y agoD Day
- maybelsyrup 5y agoAnd you can't even count it fully, really, because of the Russians. WW2 was a joint effort, yes, but the USSR turned the tide and sacrificed the most.
- drocer88 5y agoBattle of Britain turned the tide. And China suffered the most.
- yyyk 5y agoDesert Storm (first Iraq)? Even second Iraq War militarily ended up better than Afghanistan (because the politics involved was mildly less delusional).
- barelysapient 5y agoWorld War 2 and the Korean War. Modern US war doctrine is garbage. They believe a fallacy that war can be fought with precision weapons directed only at enemy combatants. Leaving most civilians and their infrastructure unharmed. The best result this can bring is occupational victory. Territory can be occupied but its not been won. Only occupied. War can only be won after completely submitting an opponent. With indiscriminate violence. Only then might an enemy submit. If not, they'll all be dead. This calculus wins wars. Its horrible. Its inhumane. And its the genius of the Taliban. The population knows: Submit or die.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoThe Korean War??? Is there a meaning to the word "success" that i'm not aware of?
- OminousWeapons 5y agoThe military achieved their mission: removing the North Korean army from the country of South Korea.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoIt was a disaster by every other metric.
- readthenotes1 5y agoShouldn't have been to remove that army from the country of Korea?
- barelysapient 5y agoThe Korean war was a defensive war. The goal was not to annihilate an opponent. It was to defend an ally. This result was achieved, thus a successful war.
- 5y ago
- postpawl 5y agoThere’s a great podcast called Blowback that goes deep into the history of both wars: https://pca.st/episode/8b3805b4-76c9-479b-89f6-efd66a71f87a https://pca.st/episode/8b3805b4-76c9-479b-89f6-efd66a71f87a The history of US involvement in those areas starts way before 9/11.
- bilbo0s 5y agoI hate to go Michael Corleone with this question, but at heart that really is the answer. The same thing will happen in any of the nations in the MidEast or Africa in which we installed our puppets. Our puppets are fighting for money. Our puppets are paid. The Opposition is not. I know it's cliché, but that's the root of the issue. Wherever we are in the world, we never give the people a narrative that evokes strong belief. A narrative that will convince young men that the beliefs evoked are worth dying for. Wherever we install governments, the opposition side almost always has foundational beliefs in place. We generally paper over the imbalance with money and military power, but that will only work for a time. Particularly in a place like Afghanistan. (As we're seeing today.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]